Why Yes, I AM Dependent on Modern Technology

I never thought of myself as overly dependent on modern technology. In fact, as I prepare to birth my third child, sometimes technology feels like my mortal enemy. Planning for a natural childbirth involves so much strategizing on how to avoid the use of electronics, modern drugs and modern-day protocols.

But a 7-hour power outage -- and its aftermath -- showed me just how much hubris was involved every time I turned up my nose at folks who use air conditioning more than I do or drive their cars more than I drive mine. Really, the difference between me and someone who relies on modern technology a little more than I do is much smaller than the difference between me and someone -- like my hero Laura Ingalls Wilder or your average Third-World family in poverty -- with no electricity or running water.

My humbling adventure started when my husband and I were driving home from a date on the North Side. My parents -- the babysitters -- called to warn us that we were going to have to open the garage door manually because the power was out. At first, as we cruised down the Eisenhower in our air-conditioned car, it didn't hit me what a big deal this was. I thought, no big deal, it's 11 o'clock at night -- time for lights out anyway.

Then I remembered that it was almost 90 degrees out. Still, hours after dark. Practically any other night this summer, an evening power outage would have literally been no sweat. But of course, it had to be on the hottest night so far of 2009. I still don't know what caused the outage, but massive numbers of people cranking up their air conditioners on our geriatric Oak Park power grid is probably a good explanation.

The first unexpected frustration we encountered was that once my husband figured out how to get the garage door open manually, we could not lock it. This didn't trouble us so much at first, until we stepped into our dark yard and saw a neighbor standing in her yard, talking on a cell phone. She paused her call to inform us that her house had been robbed that afternoon and that the burglars had escaped the police.

Well, we thought. What a great night to leave the garage unlocked and all the house windows open. The temperature out in the yard was pleasant enough, but I got about four mosquito bites while standing talking to my neighbor -- including two on my 9-months pregnant belly. Sleeping outside was not looking like a good alternative.

When we stepped into the house, it was clear that locking the windows for safety was not going to be an option either. We found my parents relaxing in the living room, all five windows open, with a transistor radio playing and a few candles burning on the table. I got myself a glass of water from the sink, tried unsuccessfully to get ice cubes from the fridge dispensor, but still, I thought, this is a piece of cake. We have cell phones, running water, radio, candles. We're still way better off than, say, pioneers.

Then I noticed the 2-year-old on the couch, looking at a book with a flashlight.

"She said she was too hot to sleep," my parents explained. The 5-year-old, fortunately, had fallen right to sleep upstairs in their room, with the one window open wide.

I thought it was great that my laptop was charged up -- maybe I could check Comm Ed's Web site to see if the 2:15 a.m. return to power my neighbor had told me about was still the latest. But of course, I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to get on the Internet since our modems are dependent on electricity.

We joked that this would be a great night for me to go into labor, since even if the power outage extended as far as the hospital, they'd of course have a generator. Even fake labor, said my mom, a labor and delivery nurse, could probably buy me at least an hour or two in an air conditioned triage room.

My husband went upstairs to check on our sleeping daughter, decided that although she was sleeping peacefully she was too hot, and walked her downstairs. I grumbled at him as we moved furniture, pulled out the hide-a-bed, and made it up that he should always let sleeping kids lie. But soon enough our older kid was sound asleep again, despite the sounds of her little sister playing and chattering as if it were 12 noon instead of 12 midnight.

My husband lay down with the preschooler, my parents went upstairs to try to sleep in the airless guest room, where an air conditioner blocked the only window, and I sat down to get some work done with my laptop while I watched the toddler play. I hoped the hot laptop on my legs would not generate enough sweat to short itself out. A couple of times my husband tried holding 2-year-old Pebbles down on the hide-a-bed with him, but that only resulted in her screaming and waking up the preschooler and I snapped at him to leave her alone. I knew all our neighbors also had their windows open, and I didn't want to disturb them. So the minutes dragged on, and the toddler went free.

When the heat got to be too much for me, even sitting in the most ventilated part of the house, I took the toddler out on the deck for a few minutes. But she chattered and chattered, and again, I worried about the neighbors and brought her back in. Besides, the mosquitoes were still out. My eyes glazed as I watched her play and felt sorry for myself. Surely I was the tiredest, hottest member of the family in my advanced state of pregnancy, but everyone else had gone off to bed and left me in charge of robobaby.

Finally, at around 1, Pebbles lay down on the kitchen floor for just a moment before popping up to play some more, and I figured I might have a chance of getting her to sleep. We went upstairs -- where the heat was worse than I could have predicted -- and lay down on the bed. I tried to ignore the sweat trickling here and there on my mountainous body while Pebbles crawled around on the bed and talked to herself, and within about 15 minutes I was rewarded -- she fell asleep. I dozed too, although I was so sweaty my maternity pajamas were sticking to my body. Had my parents not been staying over, I'd have drawn myself a cool bath, but I didn't want to wake them. Stripping naked was also out of the question since we needed to keep the doors open to maximize what meager air circulation was going on from window to window.

Then I heard a woman outside, calling her dog. Seriously. It was after 1 a.m., all the street lights were dead, and some woman was walking up and down the street, yelling "Buuuuutchie! Buuuuuuutchie!" After awhile, she went away, and I dozed off. But then, there she was again: "Butchie!"

This went on for, I think, two hours. I'd doze, she'd yell. Sometimes she sounded far away, sometimes right outside the window. Sometimes I heard a dog bark too -- was that Butchie? I found out later that my husband was lying a floor below going through the same exact hell, which is funny because he is usually a much heavier sleeper than I am. We both vowed that if we ever encounter a woman in the neighborhood with a dog named Butchie, we will punch her in the face.

The next time I was woken up, I didn't mind at all, because what woke me was the light and fan coming on in my bedroom. My father told me the next day that the time had been exactly 3:15. Even with the window closed, the sound of neighbors' air conditioners powering up had been enough to wake them from their light sleep. I turned on my window unit, closed the door, stripped down, and vowed to never again claim to hate AC because it keeps people shut up in their houses on beautiful summer evenings.

My parents were such troupers not to have gotten in their car and just driven home to their town an hour away, where there was of course no power outage. We needed them to babysit again the next day, and then in the afternoon they had a work appointment near our house. So they stayed.

Sadly, the power outage wasn't done messing with us yet. The next day, we noticed that the ice cream in the freezer was soft, but we figured it was just the effect of having had the cooling turned off for seven hours.

But we had to go out of town that day, and when we returned three days later, the ice cream was even softer and most of the ice in the ice machine had melted. Meanwhile, milk in the refrigerator side had curdled.

That's right, the power outage broke my fridge. Specifically, I'm guessing it was the surge when the power came back on. Today, a week later, a repairman finally arrived to fix the problem. Lonely Maytag repair man? My ass. It doesn't help that they've got a recall going on right now and they're super busy installing repairs on recalled units.

Over the past few days I discarded most of the freezer's contents -- including several full cartons of ice cream I'd gotten as part of a screaming good deal at Jewel. Almost as painful for a bargain hound like me, I've had to pass up several hot deals on yummies such as fruit bars and tater tots. We've been using the freezer as a refrigerator, and it works pretty well for keeping the milk from spoiling. I have to laugh when I think that, in the weeks before the due date, many moms-to-be are busy filling their freezers with casseroles to keep the family fed during those crazy newborn baby weeks. Instead, I haven't bothered grocery shopping all week as we rush to eat what didn't spoil. I'm thinking that pregnancy hormones -- which luckily always seem to have a stabilizing effect on my moods -- are the only reason I didn't freak out about the prospect of bringing a baby home to a house with no real refrigerator or freezer.

Original post to Chicago Moms Blog.

Carrie Kirby is waiting for baby to show up so she can write about the birth on My Funny, Funny Family. Photo by Mr. T in DC, used via Creative Commons license.